Bildung: The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State, 1910-1939
(figures 1 and 2)

the Keynesian Elite as the Vanguard of the Mass Consumption Sector

MLC (Morris L. Cooke, the central figure of the Taylor Society) can stand for a homogeneous praxiological habitus, milieu, and network: the Keynesian Elite  (see Fig. 2).  Cooke was active in the Brookwood Labor College, Conference for Progressive Political Action, and had an extensive correspondence with A. J. Muste, who played an important role in the Toledo Auto Lite Strike of 1934.  Brookwood supplied a large number of its students into the fledgling UAW, including Victor Reuther . . .   

FDR, on the other hand, stands for the ontological heterogeneity of his Administration, as the site of fundamental conflict between competing elites (Fig. 1), as the scene of emergent functions and institutional formations (NLRB, NRPB, etc.), and the locus of synthesis of elite competition into a homogeneous form of hegemony over the population: the Cold War and anti-Communism(1).  The guise in which this appears today is The War on Terror.  It is utterly naive to conceive of FDR or any modern President as a unitary, homogeneous agent. 





   cfd
                Morris L. Cooke (MLC)                               Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
Figure 2.  Taylor Society I: Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State, 1910-1938, is the obvious point of departure if one is to understand the dynamic of reform in the first half of the twentieth century.

Figure 1.  U.S. Political Economy by Sector, 1910-1938, is the necessary context in which to understand Figure 2.

This concept of ontological heterogeneity--of elite conflict within the Administration of FDR--enables a more realist (as opposed to idealist) approach to the notion of two New Deals: the New Deal of the National Recovery Administration (1933-34/5), and the Second New Deal (1935-37/8).  Realist here refers to  a method of looking beyond the question of what FDR may have had "in mind."  Looking for an adequate empirical field, level of detail, until one reaches the point where new concepts emerge.  Elite competition within the admin. of FDR is such a concept.

But there is a whole different level of empirical depth when one comes to the provincial right (see Miles et. al.), which further complicates matters.  But here the conflict takes place between the admin. of FDR in its entirely, and the prov. right as an outside, more organizationally and politically primitive force.  Otherwise, how else to understand the GOP primary contest of 2015?



from Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928-1945 (1967)
If American history means anything it means that Presidents, on the whole, are the expression of the convergence and conflict of dominant forces . . . .  I hold fast to the proposition that what matters in politics is the direction to which impetus is given, and what determines impetus is very largely the direction of the powerful forces that are enlisted on one side and on the other. pp. 357-8  (circa September 25/October 1, 1936)

These competing elites are in part defined by the input-ouput matrices (really existing markets, praxiological flows) of the major sectors of the American political economy (Fig. 1).  Such matrices are shorthand ways of referring to inputs of money, raw materials, intermediate goods, and services; and outputs of raw materials, intermediate goods, finished goods, and services. For three examples, see below: Figure 5. Taylor Society, 1927: Mass Distribution, input-output flows; Figure 6.  Taylor Society, 1927: Mass Housing, input-output flows; and Figure  13.  Local companies, designers, and laborers that worked on the Northern Life Tower.

from Memorandum for FF, The White House, March 2, 1936 (ibid., p. 333)

(b)  I wish you and Lasswell would try to work up a list of those smaller, independent business men -- say fifteen or twenty -- whom I could invite to Washington.  I know of no way of getting up such a list. . . . .

(d)  I hope to have a talk with Lincoln Filene.  I saw him the other day for a miinute but only with a group.  Please ask him if he can come down a little later on.

 ref: purge; court packing; Ezekiel 1936-39 compiles a list of liberal business men (Ezekiel files, Dept. of Ag., RG 16)

LaFollette

NLRB, Mediation and Conciliation Service

Stern letters to FDR 1935; other second new deal business men

1938 congressional election defeat
Three Sectoral Elites: Commodities in International Trade, Securities Bloc, and Mass Consumption

This page is primarily about the most dynamic and modern of these sectors within the Administration of FDR, and is based on research at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the FDR Library.  But because The Keynesian elite emerged in conflict with older networks of power, something must be said about them.

The Securities bloc was the object of analysis by Louis D. Brandeis in his book Other People's Money.  Brandeis used the results of the Pujo Committee's Investigation of Financial and Monetary Conditions in the United States (see Pujo Committee Interlocking Directorates 1912). A defining moment in the conflict between the emerging mass consumption sector and the Securities bloc was the Eastern Rate Case of 1910, out of which emerged the Taylor Society.  (see unfinished tables here.)  Brandeis can be considered the godfather of the Keynesian elite.

Commodities in International Trade includes much of the transportation and services infrastructure primarily dependent on such trade and thus belongs to the imput-output matrix of the latter: shipping, railroad, insurance, legal and other services.  (see W. Averill Harriman Wiki article).  Elliot A. Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: from Depression to New Deal (Columbia University Press, 1977), although not conceptualizing it as such, gives a compelling description of Commodities in International Trade in action around the candidacies of Al Smith and Newton Baker.  Also see Irving Katz, August Belmont; a political biography (Columbia University Press, 1968). 

The modern multinational corporation, however, is distinct from these sectoral matrices.  It rises to prominence in the affairs of state in the post-war years.  Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013), is a good account of its rise (Truman, Kennedy) and fall (Reagan to the present).
                          Figure 1.  U.S. Political Economy by Sector, 1910-1938          
sect

see Rosen for 1932 list





Other People's Money
Pujo Committee
TNEC


The Taylor Society: elite firms



The Taylor Society: manufacturing firms


Pollak Foundation
Twentieth Century Fund
Committee for Economic Development
Hiss List
the Provincial Right

There is a fourth major actor--the GOP right--that is defined by its economic provincialism and by its reactivity to the advance of modern capitalism, of which the Keynesian elite was the vanguard.  This is the force behind the perversion of G. Kennan's strategy of containment into a holy crusade against "Communism." (See Kennan and Davis biographies.)  In practice "Communism" meant anything that looked like the New Deal (see Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton University Press, 2012).  The GOP right's rhetorical and cognitive performativity--its genetic ontology--is QHD-3: Fascism: Ressentiment and the Mechanisms of Defense.   Bobby Jindal, in calling the GOP "the stupid party," was actually referring to its fascist rhetorical performativity rather than to its cognitive limitations.

The economic provincialism and racism of the GOP right are discussed in Michael W, Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right (Oxford, 1980), and Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: race and the southern origins of modern conservatism (Yale University Press, 2009).  See Atwater

more than just the input-ouput matrices

 But this is a fundamentally incomplete way of setting up the problematic of the Keynesian elite.  Above all, the Keynesian elite is part of the historical trajectory of the Enlightenment, characterized not simply by science as ideology, but rather, by cognitive development as practice and project (see Bildung: Was Mozart a Communist?).  In the framework established by The Quantum Heterogeneity of Dasein, the Keynesian elite is part of the superorganism of Progressivsm, characterized by the habitus (Bourdieu) of Bildung and the Will to Power.

This phenomenon among progressive "bourgeois" is well documented, not so much in the secondary sources--although Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Harvard, 2000) is a must-read on the habitus of urban-cosmopolitan Progressivism.  Postel, The Populist Vision

Indespensible--and available in published form--Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer; Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)



 Figure 2.  Taylor Society I: Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State
RRkenewdeal
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library and
United States Government Manual 1937

for more info on Fig.2 click on Keynesian Elite: Career Matrix

The Keynesian Elite: Habitus, Milieu, Network, and Organism
(pragmatism, progressivism, and the New Deal)
The place to really get a feel for the psychological-developmental ethos of Bildung and the Will to Power is in the documents listed below, all of which are available on the Internet:

The Eastern Rate Case: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess.   This can now be read online.

The Bulletin of the Taylor Society

The Papers of Morris L. Cooke (FDR Library)

LaFollette Committee Hearings.  Establishment of National Economic Council. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Manufactures, United States Senate, Seventy-second Congress, first session, on S. 6215 (71­st Congress) a bill to establish a National Economic Council. Printed for the use of the Committee on Manufactures.

Otis L., Jr. Graham, An Encore for Reform: The Old Progressives and the New Deal (Oxford, 1967)

Alon Gal, Brandeis of Boston (Harvard University Press, 1980)

Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices (Oxford, 1982)

Milton J. Nadworny, Scientific Management and the Unions, 1900‒1932 (Harvard, 1955)

Jean Trepp McKelvey, AFL Attitudes toward Production, 1900-1932 (Greenwood Press, 1952)

Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left (Princeton University Press, 2012)

Roosevelt's Purge : How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party
Figure 3.  The Taylor Society II: Member Firms, 1927
tsmemberfirms
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Marc R. Tool, Evolutionary Economics: Volume I, Foundations of Institutional Thought (M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1988) MEL(3)

Marc R. Tool, Evolutionary Economics: Volume II, Institutional Theory and Policy (M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1988) MEL(3)

Yuval P. Yonay, The struggle over the soul of economics: institutionalist and neoclassical economists in America between the wars (Princeton University Press, 1998) WSE-e

Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of Amierican Industrial Order, 1865-1917 (Johns Hopkins, 1994)

Gerald Berk, Louis D. Brandeis and the Making of Regulated Competition, 1900-1932 (Cambridge University Press (July 19, 2012))

Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate America (Princeton, 2002)

Angus Burgan, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard, 2012)

Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013)

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard, 2014).  See Paul Krugman review 

Zephyr Teachout, Even corporate America wants campaign finance reform to stop crony capitalism (The Guardian, 10-21-15)

CED Unveils Report on Crony Capitalism in America (PRNewswire, 10-15-15)

Dan Schiller, "Power Under Pressure:  Digital Capitalism In Crisis," International Journal of Communication 5 (2011)

Dan Schiller, Digital Depression: Information Technology and Economic Crisis (The Geopolitics of Information) (University of Illinois Press, 2014)

The Kennedy Assassination as a Removable Singularity

It is useful to consider the Kennedy assassination in the context of historically specific elite formations, both political economic (as nodal centers input-output matrices) and political cultural.  
Figure 4.  The Taylor Society III: Non-Mfg Organizations, 1927
TSprodserv
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
                                                                                                                               
In Fig. 5 I have proceeded immanently taken the 1927 member list of the Taylor Society and arranged the firms according to their place in the flow of money and goods.  These are actually quite large firms in relation to their specific field of economic activity; they are technologically progressive; and are intellectually among the vanguard of capitalists.  To refer to them as small and provincial is flatly wrong.  Even to refer to them as competitive, while not flat-out wrong, is misleading.  Steve Fraser's study of Sidney Hillman describes the joint union-management efforts to stabilize the market by taking labor out of competition. 

For attempt by Walter Reuther and progressive spring manufacturers to stabilze the spring industry see:

Minutes.  Murray Body Committee Local 2 at Executive Board Meeting, April 26, 1939, Toledo Ohio (Addes Collection, Box 14.11, Reuther Archives Detroit) re. competitive situation in the spring and wire industry
                                                                                                                               
The modern corporation itself is a form of planned economy (see Alfred Chandler Jr.,  The Visible Hand).


 Figure 5.  Taylor Society, 1927: Mass Distribution, input-output flows
tsmassdist
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
•These two book are drawn into the plane of immanence that contains the Keynesian elite.  An Encore for Reform is based on a sample of reformers (N=400) whose careers spanned the period covered by the figure to the right.  The author constructed a career matrix, dividing his sample into those old progressives who supported the New Deal and those who opposed it.  "One can then say of the New Deal  progressive that he or she was likely to be a person who lived in one of the larger cities and whose work was of the social work, social settlement, religious, or voluntary association variety."  (p. 169)  Academics were also a significant sector among the progressives that supported the New Deal (p. 168, 170)

These were the very people found as correspondents in the Letters of Louis D. Brandeis and in the Morris L. Cooke papers.  Many of these old progressives were members of the Taylor Society.  Thus, they properly belong in the plane of immanence.  

However, the author misconstrues them as mere middle class humanitarians, rather than as a certain kind of historicized, socialized "individual" entangled in the input-output matrix of modern capitalism as a developmental field.

The second text, A Pretty Good Club, is actually less about the U.S. Foreign Service than it is about the very same thing: a network comprised of a certain kind of historicized, socialized individuals--or rather two networks (just as the old progressives were actually two distinct--two disjoint--sets of historicized, socialized individuals).  The personnel matrix of the Keynesian Elite appears in this text as the modern, cosmopolitan ethnically heterogeneous wing of the Foreign Service emergent out of the New Deal, deeply entangled with the Taylor Society, and opposed by the old guard who were both WASP and anti-semitic.  (see Crane biography)

This is to suggest a certain way of reading that decomposes overblown nouns into actual ontological-discursive praxiological networks.  An Encore for Reform does this to a degree, but stops short of making sense of the set of personnel that supported the New Deal.

It is one of the contentions of this site that the being of things historical is to be found in the generative matrix that produces their activity.  Activity is not merely the effect of of an organism's rational asssessment of its interests.  Activity is more important than motive; it is part of the self-formative process.  Conceptually motive and activity are diametircally opposed, inasmuch as "motive" presuposes the Cartesian self, thereby obstructing the understanding of praxis.  (Deleuze-Bryant); Bourdieu; Getty
Figure 6.  Taylor Society, 1927: Mass Housing, input-output flows
tshousing
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
This page is about the Keynesian elite, the political-economic vanguard of the mass consuption sector, and ends in 1939.  As input-output matrix of the mass consumption sector, and the cultural-historical superorganism Enlightenment-->Progressivism

On the other hand, much of what happened in the post-war period, up to and including the 2014 Iraq fiasco, cannot be understood without understanding both the nature of the Keynesian elite and the nature of the forces that carried out the counterrevolution against the New Deal.  In this context these two books are of interest:

Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013): the "modern corporation"

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard, 2014).  See Paul Krugman's review.  The resurgence of “patrimonial capitalism” in our time is the subject of  "American Patrimonialism: The Return of the Repressed."

Mizruchi argues that the modern corporation that Adloph Berle wrote about has been displaced from the position it once held from Roosevelt to (more or less) Carter.  {Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard, 2012)}

The New Deal may be a thing of the past, but not the dead past.  As William Faulker has once said, “The past isn’t dead.  It isn’t even past.”  The present--hedge funds and corporate cowboys dominating educational policy-making, the crusade against science, the cognitive primitivity of public discourse--is what it is because of certain reactions to the New Deal based on the unobserved ontological fundamentals, and thus the New Deal lives on in perverse form, and remains a lingering problematic if not a mode of politics.

At any rate, as wil be seen from this and related pages, appreciting the materials on this page forces a reconceptualization of tha nature of capitalism, for it is in the New Deal that "capitalism" acheived its highest mode of development.

Re. figure 2 TS/KE: is it not strange that so far no discussion of the FFDR years has included this information: here it is the absolutely indepensible point of departure.  Let's takea look at the New Deal caon pnly mean: look at fiture 2.  No discussion that omits fig 2 is inherently limited.		 Figure 7.  Taylor Society, 1927: Machinery
tsmach
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
The forbidden zones: race and class--zones, not concepts.  To see what I mean, turn on your TV.   ss
Figure 8a.  Eastern Rate Case: Shippers Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms


Retail

Sears, Roebuck
Marshall Field & Co.
Mandel Brothers
B. Kuppenheimer
Montgomery Ward
Siegel, Cooper & Co.
G.W. Shelton & Co.

Clothing
Hart,  Shafner, & Marx
Rosenwald & Weil, Inc.
The Hub (Henry C. Lytton & Sons)
Charles A. Stevens & Brothers
Percival B. Palmer & Co.
Warren Featherbone

Millinery, Gloves, Hats, Hosiery
Bush Hat Co.
Chicagao Mercantile Co.
Joseph N. Eisendrath Co.
Parrotte, Beals & Co.
C.D. Osborn Co.

Shoes
Wilder & Co.
Guthman, Carpenter, & Telling Co.
Smith-Wallace Shoe Co.
The Rice and Hutchins Chicago Co.
Selz, Schwap & Co.
R.P. Smith & Sons & Co.

Food & Related
Southern Cotton Oil Co. (Wesson Oil)
Booth Fisheries
National Biscuit Co.
Nordyke and Marmon Co.
   (flour and cerial   
   milling machinery)
Beech-Nut Packing
Sprague, Warner & Co.
   (flavoring extracts,  
   preserves, beverages)
Food & Related, cont.

Steel-Wedeles Co.
   (importing, jobbing &
   mfg. of grocieries and
   kindred)
W.M. Hoyt Co.
Frankln MacVeagh & Co.
Oerlich & Laux, Inc.
Charles B. Ford & Co.
   (butter, eggs,
   poultry--brokers and
   wholesalers)
W.T. Rawleigh Co.
   (veterinary and pultry
   preparations)
E.B. Millar & Co. (tea,
   coffie--importing and
   mfg)
Libby, McNeil, & Libby
Decatur Brewing Co.
Thomson & Taylor Co.
   (coffee, spices--mfg
   for jobbers)
Reid, Murdoch & Co.
   (coffee, pickles,
   peanut butter)
Rueckheim Bros. &
   Eckstein (candy,
   crackerjacks)
United Cerial Mills
   (Washington Crisps,
   Egg-O-See, Toasted
   Corn Flakes)

Soap & Related
James S. Kirk
Frigid Fluid Co.
The Fairbanks, N.K. Co.
Darling & Co.
Globe Rending
Pacific Coast Borax Co.
Fitzpatrick Bros. Soap

Packaging & Paper
Humel & Downing Co.
Sanfod Mfg. Co.
The Paper Mills' Co.
J.W. Butler Paper Co.

Source: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1  pp. 6-15


Figure 8b.  Eastern Rate Case: Shippers Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Housing Supply Firms & Diversified Capital Goods


Mass Housing Supply Industries
U.S. Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry James B. Clough
Kewanee Boiler
Crane Co.    
H. Mueller & Co.
Illinois Malleable Iron Co.
Joseph T. Ryerson & Son
Devoe & Reynolds
Adams & Elting Co.
George S. Mepham & Co.
Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co.

American Lumberman
Lumber World Review
Morgan Sash & Door
Chicago House Wrecking Co.
John V. Farwell Co. (wholesale furniture, carpets, etc)
Union Furniture
Balkwill & Patch Furniture Co. Inc.
W.W. Kimball Co. (pianos, etc.)
Lyon & Healy, Inc. (pianos, etc.)
Tonk Manufacturing (piano benches)
Foley & Williams (sewing machines, supplies, pianos)
The Brunswick Balke Collendar Co.
Chicago Portrait Co.
Pitkin & Brook, Importers, Mfg and Distributors (china, glass, lamps)
M. Paulman & Co.
Diversified Capital Goods, Esp. Agricultural Implements
International Harvster
Deere & Co.
Emerson-Brantigam Co.
R. Herschel Manufacturing Co.
Rock Isoand Plow Co.
Star Mfg. Co.

Link-Belt Co.
Smith Mfg. Co.
Williams, White & Co.
Whiting Foundry Equipment Co.
Whitman & Barnes Co. (twist drils & reamers)
The Delaval Seperator Co.
Griffin Wheel Co.
Galena Sigal Oil Co.



Other
General Chemical Co.
Lehigh Valley Railroad
Peabody Coal
Inland Steel

SOURCE: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1  pp. 6-15

Figure 9.  Eastern Rate Case 1910: New England Witnesses

higher-order macro functions

David O. Ives, manager of the Transportation Department of the Boston Chamber of Commerce

John S. Lawrence, Lawrence & Co.  The selling department of the textile mills in New England

manufacturers
Charles H. Jones, President of the Commonealth Shoe and Leather Company of Whitman, Massachusetts (a close associate of Louis D. Brandeis), representing the New Engand Shoe and Leather Association

Guy T. Miller, treasurer of the Bridgeport Brass Company

B.F. Curtis of the Norton Company (a major manufacturer of grinding wheels and abrasives)

George H. Benkhart, of Smith, Klein and French Company (drugs and baby foods)

Edwin F. Fobes, President of the New England Confectionary Company

A.C. Lorion, representing the Wright Wire Company of Worcester and Palmer, Massachusetts (wire cloth for poultry netting), the Grayton and Knight Manufacturing Company (belting), and the Metal Trades Assocation of Worcester (mostly machine tool manufacturers)

E.A. Stuart, of the Mitchell-Woodbury Company, Boston (importers of crockery and china)

norlife


Figure 11.  Northern Life Tower under construction

In the mere nine months between the laying of its cornerstone on June 6, 1928 to the April 5, 1929 celebration of its completion, architect A.H Albertson’s Art Deco Northern Life Tower at the southeast corner of Third Ave. and University Street became what many locals consider still the finest structure in Seattle. (Courtesy, Mark Ambler)
Figure 10.  1937-8: Carmody & Ezekiel Lists of Liberal Businessmen: Seattle
Merchants

Nathan Eckstein, Pres. Schwabacher Grocery Co. (Wholesale grocer)
Charles H. Black, Pres. Seattle Hardware Co. (largest wholesale hardware business in  
     the state

Manufacturers

Darrah Corbet, Pres. Smith Canning Machine Co.
George H. Penny, Pres. Western Blower Co. (al sawmills in this part of country use his
     pipes and machinery for blowing the sw dust out of the mills and into the fuel bins)
W.B. McCaffray, Pres. National Fruit Canning Co.

Construction Contractors

Raymond H. Huff, V.P. & Treas., Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Co.
Henry Lohse (contractor in industrial and commercial buildings.  Built the Northern
     Life Insurance Company's big Tower)
Hugh Russell (builds for large and small home owners and for real estate developers)
W. B. Shannon (electrical engineer)

General Business

D. C. Vaile, the Industrial Committee of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce

Source.  J.C. Lindsey to John T. Carmody, March 9th, 1937.  Mordecai Ezekiel Papers,
Department of Agriculture, Record Group 16, "Businessmen," Box 60, File 1
Figure 12.   Seattle in the arly 1930s looking southeast to its hills over the Central Business District.  The  Northern Life Tower is in the center.
sea
 Figure 13.  Local companies, designers, and laborers that worked on
the Northern Life Tower


Architect, A. H. Albertson, Associates, Joseph W. Wilson and Paul Richardson.
General Contractor, Sound Construction & Engineering Company.
Structural Engineers, Hall & Stevenson.
Mechanical Equipment Engineers, Josiah C. Moore Co., Inc.
Excavation, A. C. Goerig.
Reinforcing Steel, Pacific Coast Steel Company and Northwest Steel Rolling Mills.
Readymix Concrete, Builders Sand & Gravel Company.
Structural Steel, Wallace Bridge and Structural Steel Co. and Hofius Steel & Equipment Co.
Erecting Structural Steel, J. H. Pomeroy & Co.
Erecting Reinforcing Steel, W. H. Witt.
Testing Materials, Northwest Testing Laboratories.
Granite, Western Granite Company.
Face Brick and Terra Cotta, Gladding, McBean & Company.
Brick and Tile, Builders Brick Company.
Marble, Oliver E. Lutz.
Bronze, Schilling-Everts Company
Steel Windows, TeRoller (Browne).
Hollow Steel Doors, E. H. Camp (Dahlstrom).
Metallic Floor Hardener, Tourtellotte-Bradley, Inc. (Master Builders).
Lumber, Nettleton Lumber Company.
Nail and Wire, Seattle Hardware Company.
Electrical Installation, NePage-McKenny Company.
Plumbing, Heating and Ventilating, McNeal-Taylor Company.
Flood Light Equipment, Lyman Day Morgan (Pittsburgh Reflector Company).
Cast Iron Boilers, American Radiator Company.
Oil Burners, Power Plant Engineering Company (Ray Rotary)
Piping, Crane Company (Byers).
Heating and Ventilating Units, O. C. Hatch (Herman-Nelson Corporation).
Fans, Western Blower Co.
Air Washer, Western Blower Company.
Sheet Metal for Ventilating System, A. M. Castle & Co. (Armco).
Temperature Control, Powers Regulator Company (Hornung).
Radiator Traps, Heating Service Company (Webster)
Pipe Covering, Asbestos Covering & Supply Company.
Hot Water Tanks, Birchfield Boiler Company.
Water Filter, California Filter Company.
Garage Equipment, The Bowser Company


Figure 10 arose out of my effort to place the organization of UAW Local 410, the Detroit division of the Midland Steel Corporation.  The corporation's behavior during the strike could well be referred to as benign.  Indeed, many of my interviewees pointed out that several foreman and one supervisor helped distribute food to the strikers.  (See Steve Babson)

Something similar occured during the earlier White Motor strike in Cleveland. (Kraus, Mortimer.)  It cannot be accidental that both Midland Steel and White Motor were part of the group of firms linked to the Cleveland Trust Corporation.

From my interviews with Bob Brenner and John Anderson it appears that the Midland Steel strike was staged by the Communist milieu.  Brenner distinctly remembered that when the results of the strike ballot were read to the local, Anderson reversed the vote.  A majority voted agsinst a strike, but Brenner insists that Anderson reported the No votes as Yes.  I called John Anderson in Florida to try to clarify or confirm this statement.  Anderson said that he could not remember that particular case, but that it was the kind of thing that they sometimes did!

Strategically, the Midland Strike and settlement were important in the psychological preparation for the Flint Sitdown strike.  This strike was an extraordinar		 Figure 10.  The Cleveland Trust-Midland Steel
midland cleve
•The plane of immanence (although I like the alternative, plane of consistency, better, I am sticking with Deleuze's usage), once established by this assemblage of primary sources, exerts a gravitational pull on other texts.  When reading Lewin's Lenin's Last Struggle and Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate; and Hatch's "Labor Conflict in Moscow, 1921-1925," I could not help but notice the striking overlap of segments of these secondary sources with the essence of these primary texts. There was a cognitive-linguistic similarity or isomorphism between primary and secondary texts.

Other secondary sources get drawn in at well.  Gal's biography of Brandies, because of its thorough and detailed account of Brandeis' business contacts, among the most important of whom was McElwain, is ineluctably drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency under discussion.  (Other accounts of LDB, however, are not so affected.)  

But so is Alcorn's Narcissism and the Literary Libido. and Moretti's The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture.  Once the problematic of the development of the self is opened (in Wellman explicitly, but also in ERC, McElwain, Reuther and Peterson), any text that illuminates this process is drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency.

It is this assemblage of texts into a plane of immanence/consistency that is the flux of becoming that gets labeled (as Progressivism, the New Deal, Socalism, or what have you).  But I want to avoid the crippling effect of starting with an ontological assumption that there is something (Progressivism, etc.) that has to be elucidated.  I do not want to substitute Being for becoming.  This is what I construe as transcendental empiricism.

Naturally, there is a tension here.  We do speak of things--our secondary literature is generally (but not entirely) about things, not processes.  This tension is evident in Lewin's Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate.  On the one hand the tremendous ontological instability of the times: as Lewin says, the Bolshevik Party was remade several time over in a period  of a few years; but Lewin, in an exercise of the fallacy of misplace concreteness, speaks of the Soviet System as an entity even as he points to the flow of destabilizing forces that render its existence, on the level of ontology, merely nominal.  A stable system only emerged after the death of Stalin.   This book is important reading, not simply because of its intellectual power, but also because it will force you to think about these things.		 letters from Cyrus S. Eaton to FDR (FDR Library in PPF 5344): David Stern; Ezekiel Seattle

Eaton to FDR May 10, 1939:

Supplementing my letter of May 2, the Temporary National Economic Committee might well extend the scope of its investigation to incude the activities of the three New York law firms who handle the legal aspects of the hierarchy mentioned in my letter.

These firms are Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardiner & Reed; Cravath, deGersdorff, Swaine & Wood; and Sullivan & Cromwell.  

It would be enlightening to find out the number and size of these corporations, banks, and underwriting houses by which these firms are regularly retained, together with a similar compilation of those for whom they work from time to time on registration statements and other financial matters

The continued existence of this ring of commercial and investment bankers and law firms does not serve the cause of the country . . . .

Eaton to FDR May 24, 1939 re. GOP campaign in Cleveland area.

Eaton to FDR August 31, 1939:

Your great international policies are in danger of being jeopardized in public antagonism in the personnel of the new War Resources Board with its three Morgan members: Stettinius, Gifford and Pratt . . . .  Should not such a committee be composed of bona fide representives of the nation's industrial areas rather than men located in and connected with the New York financial district.

Eaton to FDR September 12, 1939 on Wall St. and Morgan Interests

Eaton to FDR Nov 21, 1939:

Although Jack Knight, the proprietor of the Akron Beacon Journal, was brought up in the Republican tradition, he is a great admirer of yours.  His is the most successful and perhaps the most influential newspaper in Ohio.  I have been urgin Knight not to support Taft, the Ohio representative of Morgan and Kuhn Loeb.

Eaton to Willkie Nov 22, 1939

Eaton to FDR Feb 7, 1942 re TIME propaganda re Harriman and Morgan in War and Navy departments

Eaton to FDR April 6, 1944 re. growth of Wall St. since 1933



Other letters I do not have but are referenced but not included in my collection:

Eaton to FDR May 2, 1939; 
TEMP

(see Alon Gal, Brandeis of Boston, Harvard University Press, 1980)

Louis D. Brandeis, the Lenin of Progressivism, in his own words

 Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer (State University of New York Press,  1971); Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)




Committee for Economic Development, 1970
-the Railroads were less "modern" than the shippers, notwithstanding the standard myth of eg LDB as a romantic provincial (center vs. peripheral)
-the Railroads/Wall Street web of interests can be viewed as a(re)emergent aristocracy with claims to the wealth produced by others.
-
The Taylor Society emerged in the course of the Ean sterRate Case (1910), and is the zone of systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the emergent functions of the 'welfare state.  The force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input output relations emerged is suggested by the membership list of firms, broken down into

a.  capitalist enterprises
distribution and semiotics
distribution suppliers
housing finance and suppliers
machinery and tools


b. service organizations
U.S. government agencies
management, accounting & engineering firms
foundations and universities
magazines & trade journals
mass retailers
trade associations
 A.P. Gainnini (Bank of America) in PPF 1135.  These materials cover

1.  merger discussions with Bowery and East River National Bank, Commercial Exchange Bank and the Bank of America (MEMO Feb 13, 1929)
2.  news stories Giannini supports FDR sept 19, 1935; June 25, 1936
3. re furor over court-packing plan: offers to go on radio in support (Giannini to McIntyre, 2/18/37)
4. San Fran. Examiner Nov 9 1934: attacks crowd in control of NRA
SEE Bull. TS
5.  Warning to Foes of New Deal, Giannini says of Election (Sinclair) SF Bull  ?? 1934



TEMP

Miles, McGraw on various characterizations of non-elite businesses
Phillips-Fein
Dart Industries, Salvatore, Scaife, Coors


Angus Burgan, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard, 2012)

Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013)

Roosevelt's Purge : How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party

Johanna Bockman, Markets in the name of socialism : the left-wing origins of neoliberalism  (Stanford University Press, 2011)
•These two book are drawn into the plane of immanence that contains the Keynesian elite.  An Encore for Reform is based on a sample of reformers (N=400) whose careers spanned the period covered by the figure to the right.  The author constructed a career matrix, dividing his sample into those old progressives who supported the New Deal and those who opposed it.  "One can then say of the New Deal  progressive that he or she was likely to be a person who lived in one of the larger cities and whose work was of the social work, social settlement, religious, or voluntary association variety."  (p. 169)  Academics were also a significant sector among the progressives that supported the New Deal (p. 168, 170)

These were the very people found as correspondents in the Letters of Louis D. Brandeis and in the Morris L. Cooke papers.  Many of these old progressives were members of the Taylor Society.  Thus, they properly belong in the plane of immanence.  

However, the author misconstrues them as mere middle class humanitarians, rather than as a certain kind of historicized, socialized "individual" entangled in the input-output matrix of modern capitalism as a developmental field.

The second text, A Pretty Good Club, is actually less about the U.S. Foreign Service than it is about the very same thing: a network comprised of a certain kind of historicized, socialized individuals--or rather two networks (just as the old progressives were actually two distinct--two disjoint--sets of historicized, socialized individuals).  The personnel matrix of the Keynesian Elite appears in this text as the modern, cosmopolitan ethnically heterogeneous wing of the Foreign Service emergent out of the New Deal, deeply entangled with the Taylor Society, and opposed by the old guard who were both WASP and anti-semitic.

This is to suggest a certain way of reading that decomposes overblown nouns into actual ontological-discursive praxiological networks.  An Encore for Reform does this to a degree, but stops short of making sense of the set of personnel that supported the New Deal.

It is one of the contentions of this site that the being of things historical is to be found in the generative matrix that produces their activity.  Activity is not merely the effect of of an organism's rational asssessment of its interests.  Activity is more important than motive; it is part of the self-formative process.  Conceptually motive and activity are diametircally opposed, inasmuch as "motive" presuposes the Cartesian self, thereby obstructing the understanding of praxis.  (Deleuze-Bryant); Bourdieu; Getty		 xxx

Image of thought in doing history:



from Jerome Kagan, The Human Spark: The Science of Human Development (Basic Books, 2913)

"A number of abstract psychological concepts remain popular because they satisfy the need for consistency among the investigator's semantic networks. The networks for the concepts of positive emotion and negative emotion are an example . . . .  The problems trailing attempts to preserve semantic consistency are clearest for concepts related to the antonyms good and bad.  Many popular terms for human qualities belong to semantic networks that have good and bad as nodes."  p. 271


This statement captures the underlying logic--the generative grammar (or generative matrix)--of almost all writing on history.  Big business, the capitalist class

mcarthy
Digging the Grave of Modernity:
Two of the Architects of Figure 1⎯ Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn

The possibilities of advanced capitalism were limited by the availability of the wretched masses/resentiment mobilization; the "natural" appearance of so-called neoliberalism is intimately connected to figure 1 THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS



(1)
Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: the Making of Emotional Capitalism (Polity, 2007)

Wendy Wall, Inventing the American Way: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)

Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the origins of McCarthyism: foreign policy, domestic politics, and internal security, 1946-1948  (New York University Press, 1985)

Don E. Carleton, Red scare! Right-wing hysteria, fifties fanaticism, and their legacy in Texas (Texas Monthly Press, 1985)